Global Mobile Perspectives: Brazil

Last week, we shared in the regional breakdown for the 2 billion daily ad requests on the AdMob network.  As shown in the data, the rapid growth that we highlighted is not restricted to any one country or market. Throughout this quarter, we’ll be posting perspectives from different markets to learn about unique country trends, challenges and opportunities in mobile.

This week we have a guest post from Peter Fernandez, who leads mobile advertising partnerships for Latin America across the Google Mobile Ads and AdMob products, on his perspective on the latest mobile trends in Brazil.

Brazil has one of the largest populations of mobile phone users in the world and last year we saw a significant increase in the number of Brazilians accessing the Internet on these devices.  This is likely driven by operator investments in infrastructure and significant price drops in mobile data prices, including pre-paid services.  For the first time, operators have seen revenue from data plans exceed revenue from messaging services.  Given that less than a quarter of Brazilian households have fixed broadband access, mobile is poised to become an important Internet access point in the future.

What are these millions of Brazilians doing when they connect to the mobile Internet? In just the past year Google mobile search traffic in Brazil has increased over 500%, whereas Google mobile search traffic has grown over 5x globally in the last two years.  Similarly, we’ve seen an 1251% increase in ad requests on our AdMob display network in the last year.  The usage is not restricted by device types either. The majority of Brazil’s mobile subscribers own feature (WAP) phones, and a lot of the growth we’re seeing is coming from these devices.  However, high end devices such as those running the Android and iOS operating systems are growing quickly as well in terms of both ad requests and unique users.

Application developers are playing a big role in driving Brazil’s fast growth in mobile Internet usage by creating the compelling mobile content that these millions of consumers are engaging with everyday.  Last year, we saw tremendous interest from the local, vibrant developer community when we hosted our largest ever Google Developer Day in Sao Paulo.  Hundreds of Brazilian app developers are using mobile advertising to grow their businesses, such as Best, Cool & Fun Games who saw a tenfold increase in revenue from mobile advertising in 2010.  We are thrilled with this success and are excited to continue helping developers build a business on mobile.

As more Brazilian consumers spend more time on their mobile devices, advertisers need to think about how they should tailor their marketing to reach this growing mobile audience.  Today, advertisers can reach millions of users in Brazil who are searching on Google from their mobile devices.  To connect with these consumers, there are three things that advertisers should focus on when going mobile:

1. Create separate mobile campaigns.  The first step to reaching mobile users is to separate mobile ad campaigns from desktop campaigns - globally we've seen that these campaigns perform better because advertisers have more control over their bids and budgets and can make better use of mobile-specific ad features.
   
   
2. Optimize landing page experience.  Advertisers need to be sure that their landing pages are optimized for mobile. They can do this by either creating a new mobile landing page or making sure their desktop pages render well on the mobile screen.
   
   
3. Don’t forget about feature (WAP) phones.  Much of the growth in 2010 came from mobile users who are searching on feature phones.  Be sure that you are reaching these users by creating WAP mobile search ads for your mobile campaigns.

While we are thrilled about the mobile growth that we saw in 2010, we think that 2011 will be even more impressive for Brazil.  To learn more about our advertising solutions or about how to earn money from mobile advertising, visit www.google.com/mobileads. 

Posted by Peter Fernandez, Mobile Sales Lead for Latin America

Global Mobile Perspectives: Brazil
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